My digital declutter plan 2021
Consolidation of passwords for hundreds of my logins, plethora of google photos and hundreds of unwanted files, getting rid of unwanted gadgets — digital declutter is my plan — one of the resolutions of the new year.
1. Consolidation of Passwords — Few years back I used to maintain an excel of passwords for various online accounts, many of them being same passwords across sites. As the number of accounts increased, I switched to password vaults like LastPass and Dashlane. It definitely reduced my headache of maintaining the excel of passwords. What I like about these vaults is that I can add an emergency contact like my wife so in case of an unprecedented incident, my family is not struggling with financial and other important accounts.
Action: With growing clutter in these vaults, I am planning to categorize them in a better way, remove unwanted sites and change passwords to stronger and longer passwords(at least 10 characters).
2. Digital junk— I am sure I do not need 50 thousand emails in my Gmail and many of them unwanted subscriptions. Same is the case of my Google photos where I am now moving touching 50GB and getting emails from Google One to upgrade. Same situation is with my wife’s apple account.
Action: I decided to declutter rather than paying more to buy extra space. I will remove junk mails, many duplicate and blurry photos and arrange them as per events in libraries.
3. Cleaning digital storages — Few years ago I used to store data in USB sticks which I have almost got rid of except when really needed. Now I mostly use Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive or Box cloud storage as I can easily sync my files from different devices(phones, laptops). When I started using them I had nice folders arranged and now the data is scattered all over the place.
Action: I need to clear the mess from my cloud storages (Dropbox, OneDrive, Drive, Box) and arrange them in folders
4. Uninstalling apps — I have many applications on my phone and laptop which I never used or have stopped using for months. These include games and some trial apps or eBooks.
Action: I need to list down all unwanted apps and remove them from my devices
5. YouTube channels subscription — I have been using YouTube for learning as well as entertainment and as of now, I have hundreds of subscriptions. Many times, I just Google the word and end up finding the video I want in my subscriptions. A lot of the subscriptions are no longer relevant.
Action: I need to remove unwanted and outdated YouTube channels from my subscription list
6. Selling or giving away unwanted devices: I have some old phones, printer, video game console which are just occupying space in my study room.
Action: I need to sell or give away unwanted devices on Kijiji and Facebook market place. It will declutter some space and will fetch me some bucks. In fact, I already sold one of the old phone and paid annual medium subscription
I feel this will help to organize my stuff better and bring in efficiency. Hope you have a ‘declutter list’ for yourself !
“Writing tasks on chart board in my room makes me remind I have to be commitment to myself”
